Customer Feedback Management Solution for Energy & Utilities

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Simultaneously, strict regulations have been imposed to improve the handling of customer complaints and feedback. As a result, the spotlight is firmly on the development and enforcement of policies to enhance customer satisfaction, and manage customer feedback and complaints in a more effective and efficient manner.

Energy and Utility companies are also looking at ways to minimize their costs while improving customer relations. Beyond regulatory compliance, the real value of customer feedback and complaints lies in one’s ability to interrogate the data, and pinpoint the real source of dissatisfaction; to identify the areas and changes that will have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction, and prevent the identified issues from recurring.

Regulatory requirements for managing customer complaints
Regulated Energy and Utility providers are obligated to record the details of every customer complaint received, irrespective of whether the complaint is immediately resolved or not. The expectation is that the problem will be resolved at the earliest opportunity.

In addition, each state and public utilities commission has its own rules on ideal SLAs -how quickly companies should respond to customer complaints, and what policies and procedures need to be in place to ensure that customer complaints are properly addressed.

If the complaint has not been resolved to a satisfactory level within the stipulated time frame, the customer can escalate the complaint to the Public Utilities Commission who will then evaluate the complaint, and decide if it warrants regulatory action with penalties. The result? Costly litigations and excessive fines.

Energy and Utility companies that operate across multiple states and regions need to manage multiple SLA requirements, policies and procedures to ensure that they are responding to customer complaints in an effective and efficient manner.

Customer complaints can range from outage, to power quality, to bills for utility service, to deposit requests, to infrastructure problems (meters not working properly), to environmental issues, to public facility concerns (street light outage).

The utility should maintain the necessary policies, procedures, processes and infrastructure --including multiple channels (Email, Phone, Web forms) - to accept complaints, and process them in a simple manner.

Every utility should also promptly investigate any complaint in a fair manner, and report the results to the complainant. If the report of the investigation is made orally, the utility should offer the complainant, upon written request, the opportunity to receive the report in writing. The utility should also effectively communicate the details of the complaint handling procedures along with the company address and telephone number.

MetricStream Customer Feedback Management Solution
MetricStream Customer Feedback Management Solution is a comprehensive solution that enables Energy and Utility companies to establish and follow consistent procedures for managing customer feedback, capturing complaint information, logging exceptions, managing tasks, planning actions, resolving complaints, and reporting on their status.

The solution streamlines the development and implementation of remediation and corrective action plans across the enterprise. It also provides real-time visibility for tracking each complaint from initiation to closure, following the appropriate processes to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

The powerful analytics and reporting capability with graphical dashboards helps managers perform trend analyses, and spot recurring problems. This, in turn, enables them to drive root cause analyses in a timely manner.

The solution also provides the ability to identify and track the quantitative impact of loss events and liabilities related to complaints. These results enable companies to drive effective operational processes.

Customer Feedback Creation
MetricStream Customer Feedback Management Solution enables customers, internal users and contact center employees to initiate feedback or log a complaint for any of the available categories. New categories can be added if required. Customers can also attach various supporting documents.

The system captures all crucial details and parameters about the feedback or complaint. It guides the user by dynamically enabling, disabling, mandating or defaulting fields based on the data that is entered. Drop-down menus, logical validations and auto-fill capabilities boost efficiency, and ensure the accuracy of information.

Customer Feedback Routing
The MetricStream solution supports complaint or request categorization based on pre-defined criteria such as severity level and responsible personnel. Depending on these parameters, the system automatically routes the complaint or request for investigation, response, review, approval and reporting, as per standard operating procedures.

The system also provides a unique rule-based engine to create workflow rules for how each complaint or feedback should be routed, and to whom. Therefore, feedback on billing can be arranged to automatically go to the billing department. Similarly, a voltage issue complaint can be arranged to automatically reach a field service representative.

After a complaint has been received, the system routes it for review and approval, enabling authorized personnel to determine if the complaint is valid and requires remedial action.

Notifications are sent to the relevant departments and personnel, and an escalation mechanism is triggered based on the severity and priority of the request or complaint. Documents and references can also be attached to the complaint or request record.

Investigation and Remedial Action
To contain the impact of the complaint, the MetricStream solution sends automatic alerts and notifications to the appropriate personnel for initiating immediate investigative and remedial action.. Each investigation is driven by collaborative workflows that ensure responsiveness by assigning tasks to an individual or a team with due dates based on the severity level of each complaint.

The solution provides references to similar complaints and their history to support an effective root cause analysis. It also enables multiple root causes to be linked to a single complaint, as well as multiple complaints linked to a single root cause.

After the root cause analysis is performed, the solution helps users create an investigation response and action plan, and route them to the respective manager for review and implementation. Failure to complete the investigation in time leads to escalation.

Once a corrective action or remediation is initiated, the complaint remains open till the action plan is carried out, and the results are verified for effectiveness.

Feedback Management and Tracking
The MetricStream solution enables companies to create a communications plan through which they can stay in the touch with the customer, and let them know how their complaint or request is being handled.

The solution also assigns a unique number to each complaint or request, enabling managers to automatically track its status as it moves from one stage to the next. Real-time complaint and exception data is provided, along with analytics for trend analysis.

The solution provides complete visibility into the complaint management lifecycle, enabling comprehensive aggregate reporting, as well as individual complaint status tracking.

Graphical executive dashboards highlight high-priority complaints, and provide numerous statistics to determine trends and common sources of complaints. In addition, flexible reports for status tracking, scorecards and compliance dashboards can be readily accessed.

Evidence / Document Management
The MetricStream solution allows customers and internal teams to attach various documents to any input form, template or field. The solution provides a comprehensive content or document management system which enables companies to adopt an electronic and automated approach to document management across the enterprise.

This Web based system provides a central repository to store and organize documents. It also provides integrated collaboration and workflow tools to access, create, modify, review and approve documents globally in a controlled manner.

A powerful analytics and reporting capability with graphical dashboards help track each document from origin to obsolescence, and offer managers complete visibility into the system.

Reports and Metrics
MetricStream Customer Feedback Management Solution provides complete visibility into the request or complaint database and lifecycle. The solution enables users to associate various request or complaint types, spot trends, and thus ensure timely preventive actions.

Graphical executive dashboards provide statistics and data by a variety of complaints parameters, such as type, status, due dates, closure times, region, and lots. These dashboards come with a unique drill-down capability that takes the user down to the finest level of detail.

The system also provides quick access to graphical scorecards or tabular data that can be easily exported in standard formats and layouts.

An advanced decision tree functionality supports the identification of reportable events, as well as the type of report that needs to be filed based on thresholds and escalation triggers.

The process of reporting is simplified, as the system automatically generates mandatory reports in prescribed formats and layouts. The reports are exported in standard file types such as MS Word, and can be worked on further before being submitted for management or regulatory review.

End-users can also build custom reports without any programming, using the simple Reports Wizard. The solution also provides a systematic mechanism for managing regulatory reporting and filings as well as surveys and certifications in a consistent, reliable and predictable manner. It ensures accountability by enforcing the flow of information and records, and documenting attestations and representations at appropriate stages.